The Divine Woman: Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens in T'ang Literature

by Edward H. Schafer

This important exploration of Chinese mythology focuses on the diverse and evocative associations between women and water in the literature of the T'ang dynasty as well as in the enormous classical canon it inherited. By extension, it peers from medieval China back into the mists of ancient days, when snake queens, river goddesses, and dragon ladies ruled over the vast seas, great river courses, and heavenly sources of water, deities who had to be placated by shaman intercessors chanting hymns lost even by the T'ang. As with his other notable works, Professor Schafer's meticulous researches into the material culture of the past, coupled with a delightful writing style, allow us to better appreciate the literature of the T'ang by clarifying important contemporaneous symbols of fertility, mutability, and power, including the wondrous and ubiquitous dragon.

Genres: China, History, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Mythology

239 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

An American sinologist and a noted expert on the Tang dynasty. Schafer's most famous works include The Golden Peaches of Samarkand and The Vermilion Bird, which both explore China's interactions with new cultures and regions during the Tang dynasty.

Schafer earned a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1947. He then became a professor of Chinese there and remained at Berkeley until his retirement in 1984. From 1955 to 1968 Schafer served as East Asia Editor of the Journal of the American Oriental Society, and from 1969 to 1984 he held the Agassiz Professorship of Oriental Languages and Literature at Berkeley. He is also known within sinology for his uncompromising belief in the importance of language skills and learning and his differing approach on this subject to John King Fairbank. His publications include over 100 scholarly articles and more than a dozen books.

Also known as 薛爱华

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schafer presents a world of wonder where ancient goddesses live on in medieval literature. The stories and poems are shamanistic, erotic, and spiritual all at the same time. The goddesses appear in the forces of nature, and seldom in world mythology do we see nature treated with such tender admiration. No wonder the ecologist Gary Snyder wanted to write the foreword.

Over the centuries down to through Tang dynasty, Schafer shows the powers of Chinese nature goddesses in decline. From primordial wild woman deities wearing feathers or shells, they slowly fade into ghostly, silken-gowned consorts. A poem attributed to the "Maiden in the Mist of the Hsiang" [River] reads:

That red tree -- the color of intoxication in autumn,
That blue stream -- a string strummed at night.
A delightful meeting that may not be repeated:
This wind and rain are blurring them, as will the years.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The publisher's description is accurate enough but I must add that if one is looking for a book to help one understand Tang poetry, this is one of the best sources available. Schafer takes the veiled, archaic text of the genre and explains the references, illusions, and images used, de-mystifying them. An example: "Indigo-dense woods" should be understood as "The mountain slopes are covered with gloomy woods" (pp. 94-95), "By great Kiang's flopping surges: a deity with trails of mist" = "The river churns wildly through the gorge; near it, also a wild vision, is a spirit trailing evanescent mists like a gown." This is heady staff and a translator is definitely needed. Who better than the master of knowledge of the Tang but Professor Schafer? A few introductory chapters into the work where Schafer has explained all this river/mist/dew/tears/clouds/lost love imagery, and you're on your way to understanding all those Tang poems you read as a student, when you missed 90% of the imagery and probably 99% of the meaning.

This is also a go-to volume if you're looking for examples of classical Chinese paintings to illustrate both Tang poetry as well as the above-mentioned water/sexual/gender imagery. Read this while sitting with a laptop or tablet so you can look up all the wonderful visual references mentioned. For this reason, it's a very, very slow read. The annoying use of Wade-Giles made it even slower reading.

However, as Schafer himself notes, there are "endless reiterations of rain-soaked mountainsides, swirling mists, blinding cloudbanks, howling gibbons, and shrieking winds" so you may feel, as I did, the occasional need to skim sections until something catches your eye again. I for one would have appreciated more background on the female shamans who lost ground around the Han to these slimmer waisted ethereal 'rainbow maidens'. Diligent readers, however, will find many interesting nuggets of life during the Tang, for example this one regarding tea during the Tang: "Li Hsien-yng, in an elaborate fantasy based on the gift of a package of tea from a friendly monk, imagined that he saw the greenish hair of the Hsiang Fairy swirling in his bowl as he mixed the powdered tea leaves" (p. 125).

In the conclusion, Schafer states his authorial intention: "to disclose something of the entanglement of myth, religion, symbolism, and romantic imagination in a segment of T'ang literature. It is evident that even the subtlest poem or the smoothest tale confuses myth with history, legend with fact, pious hope with rational belief." Indeed.

[Karolinde (Kari) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sometimes I think "experts" use language as a way of proving they're better than everyone else. This guy is definitely one of them. On top of the overbearing vocabulary, I don't feel like he really states anything useful about "goddesses" during this era. Not to mention his arguements are often convoluted and circular, with unconvincing evidence. Not really worth the effort.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tuesday night at work I read Edward Schafer's book The Divine Woman: Dragon Ladies and Rain Maidens. Schafer was one of the foremost scholars in Tang studies in America. He's written several books, now mostly out of print, describing the dynasty. He has a rather poetic writing style and while writing scholarly books I think he's something that would appeal to the general reader as well.

The Divine Woman is his book about Tang water Goddesses. In the introduction he started by talking about the tradition of female shamans in China, and the worship of Chinese Goddesses. Schafer starts by talking about the history of the different river Goddesses in China the appearance of female water spirits and longs (dragons) and chiao (kracken). The different Goddesses he identified as; Nu Kua, The Goddess of Wu Shan, The Lo divinity, the Han woman, the Hsiang consort. While offering little evidence of any cultic practices, beside the mention of alters, he looked at the literary references to the Goddesses during the dynasty, particularly to their appearance in poetry.

I hate to say it but Schafer almost came across as a bit of a snobb. He spent a great deal of time analyzing poetical accounts, and only a little time analyzing prose tales, and no times at all on "non-fiction" or religious or governmental documents. His entire impression of the Goddesses came through what the elite poets wrote and not what "ordinary" people thought about them. (Whether or not this popular elite divide existed is another debate to go into another time). However it seemed a rather unbalanced approach, he spent most of his time carefully scrutinizing the references to Goddesses found within a handful of Tang poets, and spent only a little time on the hundreds of stories about the Goddesses and their interactions and roles among the mortals that were popular during the day. Something I think would have been much more informative and interesting. He seemed to dismiss most of these stories as being too popular with little literary merit. While from a religious studies perspective this may not have been the most sensible way to go it did make for a picturesque and enjoyable read. Explaining a lot of Tang poetry about wind and rain.

He also had a brief chapter in particular on the works of Li Ho. He sounded fantastic. He died at the age of 27, I think, and wrote about ghosts, and spirits and supernatural and dark things that sound absolutely delightful. I found his works on line and will now have to search through my Tang poetry books, particularly the one with the cds, to try and find more of his poems.

While more of a literary history than a religious history there is definitely some interesting religious interpretations to be made from this book. Schafer states how the traditional Chinese rain and water Goddesses were replaced by the Long from India who were made into the Dragon Kings and the Goddesses were transformed into their daughters. Something I have not come across before. He also is a strong believer in the Shamanistic tradition which is also nice. The book is quite old now and these arguments have become more controversial. However the book is still a delightful read. Rather than a dry academic text it is full of poetry and prose.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schafer makes too much use of poorly analogous Western concepts throughout the first chapters, but happily that becomes less common as the pages go by. Some of his chosen translations are quite inappropriate, such as using kraken for 蛟, jiao, seemingly oblivious to the squid like nature of the European kraken versus the sleek, snake-like dragon nature of the 蛟. Also, his organizational methodology is quite tiresome. Each chapter looks over the same handful of ancient mythological personages, from 女娲 Nvwa, to 洛神, Goddess of the Luo River, in a different context. Though perhaps there could be worse ways to organize such a book?

[Mary Catelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting information. Makes some leaps of logic that are not supported by the evidence offered.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edward Schafer is one the most innovative sinologists and he specializes in understanding themes in Tang poetry. In Divine Woman, he looks at the theme of the Women Goddesses in literature and begins with Nuwa and the Wushan gorges.

The theme of the Goddess of the rivers or creator Goddess is related to shamanism and Schafer is able to show the links between poetry and shamanism.